Monthly Archives: March 2011

I was introduced to REST in a talk that the author gave at the local Java user group, and was really impressed by the concise, logical and entetaining way in which he presented the REST concept, and decided to get the book to go further. It’s not terribly thick, but manages to cover both the concepts of REST as well as examples of real-world solutions. The best book about the topic I know. Definitely recommended.

The definitive book about CouchDB, written by some of CouchDBs core developers. It’s well written, easily digestible, and is exactly what you need if you are new to NoSQL and CouchDB. One cavat is that some of the newest features (especially CouchApp) could do with a more extensive treatment, and CouchDB moves pretty fast, so there are some changes and new features in the current version that the book does not yet cover. Nevertheless the best collection of info about CouchDB currently available. Definitely recommended. There is also a free online version.

Aaron Erickson: The nomadic developer – IT consulting career guide

Bought it because I found some blog posts by the author that were good. The book contains some good ideas and valuable insights into the inner workings of an IT consulting firm. Would have made a great essay or a series of blog posts, as a book the signal-to-noise ratio is not great.

Jeffrey Fox: How to become a rainmaker

One of the most frequently recommended books about sales. Good for motivation, or to get into the mindset of a salesperson. Not much specific information, or applicable tips, though. Verdict: mediocre.

Andy Hunt: Pragmatic thinking and learning – refactor your wetware

Strategies to improve learning and creativity. Teaches analytical, left-brained techies to get in touch with their right-brain side. Some of the techniques are a little wacky, others are great. Not a book you read once for the info, but rather a collections of tools you might want to try. I should re-read this. Recommended.

Thord Daniel Hedengren: Smashing WordPress

It’s hard to find a good book on wordpress, since most are oriented at a non-techical audience, and don’t really go deep. This one is also aimed at designers, but is not dumbed down, but intended for people who want to really get into the guts of their wordpress installation. If you want to do things like build your own themes or plug-ins, or use wordpress as a full-blown CMS, this on is the book to get. Recommended.

Dierk Konig et al. : Groovy in Action

The definitive book on Groovy. Aimed at peopl coming from Java, so if you already know the concepts of dynamic languages from e.g. Ruby, the first chapters can be a little long-winded. Later chapters are rather domain-specific, but you’ll probably find a few neat new tricks to do with groovy. Recommended, even if a new edition is overdue (when I saw a conference talk by the author in 2009, he estimated the second edition to come out mid-2010…).

Mark Pilgrim: HTML5 Up and Running

A comprehensive tutorial teaching how to use all the new features of Html 5, while also referencing current browser compatibility and technological fallbacks. Hands-on, straightforward and fun. Highly recommended. Also freely available online at diveintohtml5.org

Robert C. Martin: Clean code

A classic, no idea how it could have escaped me until now. The title says it all, really – everything you’ve ever heard about how to write clean, readable, understandable code in one book. I don’t agree with everything Martin prescribes, and in some cases I’d have liked to see not just what to do, but also how to get there from originally un-clean code. Still great, highly recommended, and should be required reading for anybody who wants to share a repository with me 😉

Frank Müller: Systemprogrammierung in Google Go

I had the honor of doing a technical review of this one before it came out. It’s a thorough, well-written and acessible book to learn the go language. Recommended (though I’m obviously biased about this one).

Yasmine Limberger: IT survival guide

You know the kind of book that’s full of hard-won, real-world experience? This is not one of them. It reads rather like the author bought a book on each topic’s chapter and summarized it. Not recommended.

Novels:

Stiegg Larsson: The girl who played with fire
Stieg Larsson: The girl who kicked the hornet’s nest

Stuffed with feminism, leftist politics, hollywood-style “hacking” and gross crime scenes. As to its writing style, to quote a story from the new yorker: “there are blatant violations of logic and consistency. Loose ends dangle. There are vast dumps of unnecessary detail. When Lisbeth goes to IKEA, we get a list of every single thing she buys. The jokes aren’t funny. The dialogue could not be worse. The phrasing and the vocabulary are consistently banal.” And yet it’s a gripping yarn; I found myself not being able to put those suckers down, and read the two huge volumes over the christmas break. Not a highlight of literature, but perfect for that next vacation or long train ride.

John Burdett: The godfather of kathmandu

John Burdett is the author of several novels set in Bangkok, and manages to mix murder mysteries, intracultural insights and zen buddhism. This newest one is a little weirder, and not as good, as his previous novels, but still enjoyable.

Cory Doctorov: Somebody comes to town, someone leaves town

If a novel about a guy whose father is a mountain and whose mother is a washing machine sound strange to you, that’s because it is. The book is very well written, and just sucks you into the story. Unfortunately, it ends rather apruptly, without bothering to explain any of its mysteries.

Robert Parker: Early Autumn
Rober Parker: High Profile

Hard-boiled private detective? Check. Heinous crimes? Check. Mysterious sexy women? Check. Robert Parker is like a modern-day Raymond Chandler, and just like him not afraid to write pulp ficition. I wouldn’t necessarily admit liking his novels, and you won’t miss out on any great literature if you skip them, but they make for great airport reading.

Jhumpa Lahiri: Interpreter of Maladies

Short stories about the lifes of Indians, both those caught in poverty in India, and those trying to bridge tradition and modernity as NRIs. A little artsy, a little sad, but masterfully crafted little tales.

David Gilmour : Film Club

The story about a father reconnecting with his son over watching classic movies is just an excuse for the author to praise his favorite filmmakers’ technique. Not worth reading for the story, but made me want to watch the movies mentioned.

Frank McCourt: Angela’s Ashes
Frank McCourt: ‘Tis

If you ever feel bad, read this. Will put your problems in perspective. McCourt describes his childhood growing up in a dirt-poor family in Ireland. Warm, funny, like listening to a buddy telling you his life stories.

Ronald Reng: Mein Leben als Engländer

Kind of autobiographic story of guy from Hungary trying to start a new life in Germany.

Cory Doctorov: Eastern Standard Tribe

Since Cory Doctorov publishes all his novels CC-licensed on his website, no reason to get them all, right? The first novel in my Doctorov reading-spree, Eastern Standard Tribe is more mature and more polished than his earlier novels, while still kind of half-baked, and a little weird. Not his best work, but enjoyable reading.

Cory Doctorov: Makers

Another Doctorov novels, and a really good one. If you’ve ever built something just to see what it can turn into, this novel will give you a warm fuzzy feeling.

Peter Watts: Blindsight

Mediocre science fiction. Some interesting ideas, but never really goes deep on anything, and ends at a point where you feel the story has not even started.

Mario Puzo: Omerta

If you liked the godfather, this is more of the same. A little cheesy.

Dan Simmons: Hyperion

A remake of the decameron (classic collection of short stoires, wrapped into a surrounding tale of travelers telling each other stories) as science fiction. The surrounding story is kind of weak, but the individual stories are gripping and imaginative.

Cory Doctorov: Little Brother

This is the book to give to your relatives when discussing issues like online privacy, patents, DRM or anti-terrorist laws. And a damn good story to boot. In my opinion, the best of Doctorov’s novels. Highly recommended.

Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse 5

Supposedly a great classic, all I can say is I found it strange, incoherent and rambling.

Joseph Heller: Catch-22

Supposed to be a great classic, but I found it boring. Or maybe I’m just not compatible with books that are considered great literature, i.e. books where nothing much happens, because it’s all about the internal psychological developments of the characters.

John burdett: the last six million seconds

A murder mystery set in Hong Kong shortly before the handover to from Britain to China. Light reading for long train rides, but at the same time a good, athmospheric look into the intersection of Western and Asian culture.

Jane Austen: Pride and prejudice

Pride and prejudice is for novels what Sunny is for pop songs: a classic that has been covered, updated, interpreted or ripped-off a million times. The original is quite readable, and a nice insight into old-fashioned English society. Which unfortunately means that at least half the book is concerned with the characters worrying and discussing whether what they’d like to do will be socially acceptable, so I had to put it down before finishing it.

Cory Doctorov: Overclocked

A collection of short stories. Did I mention that I was on a doctorov-reading spree?

George Martin: A game of thrones

As mediocre, run-of-the-mill fantasy, a guilty pleasure. Better, and less formulaic, than most other books of its kind, with the good guys losing as often as not. Still, the characters are a little flat, and after a while you notice that the story is not really going forward that much (*cough* wheel of ti

Non-fiction:

Tiziano Terzani: In Asien

A collection of Spiegel magazine’s longtime Asian correspondent, spanning the decades from the vietnam war to present times. Makes you realize how far south-east Asia has come from a civil-war ridden basket case to booming tiger economies.

Richard Thaler: Nudge

Psychological studies about how small changes in an environment can influence seemingly rational choices. Interesting, and potentially helpful. But also one of those books you don’t really have to read once you’ve read an interview with its author about it.

Wolf Schneider: Deutsch für Profis

A kind of Strunk&White-like style guide for writing in German. More entertaining, but less deatiled and thorough than S&W, though.

Craig Storti: Speaking of India

Intercultural communication is something that cannot be learnt from books, only practiced. But this book comes as close as possible to teaching westerners how to relate to Indians in a business setting. If you’ve ever wondered why your Indian contractors never told you that they would miss a deadline, or why they never implemented those suggestions they had agreed to, read this book. Even having previously spent time in India, I found quite a few things in it I had not realized before.

Jason Fried: Rework

Contains 37signals’ business philosophy, love it or hate it. Some of it sounds a little smug, some is obvious, and some probably works well, but only if you are 37signals. Still there is enough thought-provoking material in here to make it worth the short read. Not much new stuff, though, if you’ve been following their blog for a while.

Bill Bryson: At home

Following in the vein of his “a short history of nearly everything”, Bryson this time looks at everyday things around us. Basically, a history of western civilization, as evidenced by the things we keep around us in our houses to make life more comfortable. Way less boring than it sounds, in fact I found it quite fascinating to read about why things are and developed the way they are. Would be even better if it was written by a geek rathen than a social scientist, i.e. I would have preferred less focus on history and culture, and more on science and economics. Still, highly recommended.

Michael Lewis: The big short

One of the better books about the financial crises. Accessible, entertaining, yet contains enough financial details to occupy the MBAs among its readers. Not really an analysis of the crises, more a kind of biography of some characters that had the guts to bet against real estate-based derivatives. Thankfully mostly avoids sensationalism, and gives a good insider’s perspective about the wheelings and dealing of the financial derivatives trade.

Michael Lopp: Being Geek

The book version of the popular programmer blog randsinrepose.com Essays on careers, life, technology, management and nerdism.

Jeremy Haft: All the tea in china

Could be called “mistakes to be avoided when doing business in china”. Good antidote when you’ve read one too many article in the buiness press with nothing but hype about China.

Malcolm Gladwell: What the dog saw

Gladwell is an author I hate to love. Definitely more entertainment than science, and more thought-provoking than thought through. Still, damn well written, and interesting. This book contains some of his articles from the new yorker magazine – good choice, since Gladwell definitely works better in essay- rather than book-size.

I’ve been using a kindle for most of my reading for the last 4 months, and since the kindle is still kind of early-adopterish in Germany, thought it might be of interest to do a full review.

The kindle device

Form factorWith the third version, the kindle finally doesn’t look goofy anymore, and became small enough to fit into a jacket pocket. Build quality is solid, and the dark gray plastic looks good. it feels very thin, and is easily light enough to comfortably hold in one hand for long periods of time. The screen is large enough, but I wish they would get rid of the qwerty keyboard in favor of a slightly taller screen. The keyboard works pretty well, but I just don’t need it. I use it maybe once a week to search for a word inside a book. Amazon seems strangely reluctant to kill the keyboard, though – maybe they think people will buy more books if they can impulse shop right on the kindle itself?

The kindle's size compared to a magazine

Screen
The screen quality is good, text is dark and very sharp (though the background is still a light gray rather than real white). It has sufficient grayscales that images look good, too. You never really miss color when reading a book. Page turns are plenty fast enough for turning a page while reading – though flipping through lots of pages to search for a chapter is still slow. The screen is perfectly usable in sunlight, though it does reflect a little, about as much as a glossy magazine. Overall, reading on the kindle screen is much, much better than on an LCD, and about 90% as enjoyable as on paper.
The screen can update small regions pretty fast, so e.g. moving the cursor through a menu works almost as fast as on an LCD screen.

The kindle's screen, with some glare when shining a table lamp directly on it

User interfaceTo generalize: easy to use if you’re computer-literate. But not quite mom-friendly yet. Overall quite simple and straightforward, but there are some non-intuitive things. Like the fact that while reading, moving the cursor by going up and down on the D-pad is quite frequently used for notes, highlights and dictionary access, but if you press the D-pad to the left or right, it will suddenly and unexpectedly make you jump by a whole chapter. Or the back-button, whose action is sometimes predictable, and sometimes not. Or the fact that the list of books does not scroll, but is advanced by turning the page – which fits the book metaphor well, but throws me for a second every time. But most of the time, the user interface doesn’t matter much, because it really is a book-reading device – once you’ve opened a book, all you do is flip pages, and the computer part drops out of the way.

Features

BrowserFree 3G browsing anywhere in the world? Sounds great! Except you won’t use it, because the browser is pretty much unusable. Website rendering is quite good, but the slow screen refresh rate, akward zooming (no touchscreen means no two-finger pinching), and akward scrolling/selecting links (no mouse means navigating purely with the D-pad) make web browsing on the kindle definitely less than enjoyable. Tried it once, never used it again.

MP3-PlayerCan play MP3 files you drop into the music folder of the kindle, but has no folders, playlists or fixed order of songs. Nice to have, though, if only to drown out other peoples’ chatter while reading on the subway.

3GNot necessary, get the cheaper Wifi version instead. The two advantages of 3G are that you can buy books on your kindle anytime, and it automatically syncs which page you were on for every book to other devices. But I prefer to use a PC to buy books anyway, and don’t really use kindle apps on other devices. And having wireless (either 3G or Wifi) enabled kills battery life – with the wireless on, you recharge every day; whereas with the wireless off you never have to worry about battery life and recharge once every couple of weeks.

Extras

PDF supportThere are two ways to read PDFs on the kindle: Drop them in the books folder as-is, or have them converted by amazon to the kindle format. For A4/letter-sized PDFs, reading them in the original size is clunky enough that you probably won’t do it – the screen is way too small to read the whole page, and zooming and scrolling is pretty annoying. Conversion to kindle format works pretty well for PDFs that are mostly text. In short, if you were hoping to read your pdf-formatted technical books on it, forget it (or get the larger kindle DX).

A PDF file converted from letter-size

HighlightsAnything you highlight in a book gets extracted and stored in a file spanning all books you read, so you can build up a file with your favorite quotes from your library. Sweet. You can also have kindle show you which passages got highlighted by other people, although I found that quite distracting and turned it off.

DictionaryThis is definitely a killer feature for me, since it’s so well integrated: Move the cursor to any word, and the kindle will pop up the definition from the dictionary. Insanely great for people whose first language is not english – for example, my girlfriend was reading Aravind Adiga’s The white tiger as a paperback, but found it hard to get through all the Indian English slang. So I got it for her on kindle, where she could easily look those up in the dictionary, and she enjoyed reading it this way a lot more.

Even better: you can also buy dictionaries for other languages (or roll your own, more on that in a later post). I don’t use the dictionary much for English, but when reading a French or Spanish novel, where I am proficient enough to read the original, but not proficient enough to get by without frequently looking up words, the fast dictionary lookup is a real killer feature.

Storage
Enough that you will never worry about it. Having my whole library of books that I currently plan to read always with me in a single small and lightweight package is maybe the greatest advantage of an ebook reader over books on paper.

The kindle store

Since the kindle handles no DRM system except Amazon’s own, the kindle store had better be good. Luckily, it is good. Or at least as good as publishers allow an ebook store to be for now. The catalog is huge; large enough that you will find almost anything. But it’s not as complete as Amazon’s paper book catalog. Out of 10 books on my (rather eclectic) wish list, I bought 6 on the kindle, 2 were available as a paper book, but not available for kindle, and 2 were available as both paper and ebook, but happened to be cheaper as a paperback.

Which brings us to pricing. Prices are higher in Europe than in the U.S. – a novel priced at 10 USD in the US will cost German customers 13 or 14 dollars. Ultimately prices come to about the same as a paperback, most are a little cheaper. Compared to hardcover books, kindle prices are a steal, but not all books are 10-15 bucks – expensive professional books are expensive on kindle as well.

Production value of some percentage of books is rather disappointing. While the “print quality” is obviously not an issue, and the fonts are customizable, extras like the cover, the table of contents, or scanned images often look quite shoddy, almost like the publisher deliberately tried to make the ebook version uglier than the paper book.
One great thing about the kindle store is that you can get a free sample (typically the first chapter) of almost anything.

Ebooks vs. paper books

For music, the transition from physical media to digital files, from CDs to an MP3 player, was quite natural. You could convert music both ways, ripping CDs to MP3s, or burning MP3s on CDs. Digital files had the added advantage that, unlike with CDs, you could now buy single tracks instead of having to buy whole albums.

None of these advantages exist with ebooks. Unlike physical books, ebooks cannot be traded secondhand, cannot be rented from a library, and cannot be easily printed out. Besides, paper books have infinite battery life, great resolution and contrast, are immune to being dropped, and are cheap to replace if you should lose them.

So why would someone buy ebooks? For me, the one killer advantage of ebooks is that I take along one single “book”, i.e. the kindle reader, and have everything I am currently planning to read with me. I can read anything, anytime, and don’t have to carry anything havier than a single paperback.Price is less of an advantage than you’d think. If you take into account that amazon sells paperbacks really cheaply, but prices kindle books higher for non-U.S. customers, the price advantage of kindle books comes down to about 20% on average.

In handling and usage, the kindle is much closer to a book than to a computer. Which is good, since compared to e.g. an iPad, learning curve and distractions are kept to a minimum. But it also means it sticks surprisingly, and unnecessarily, close to the mental model of a paper book.There are some innovations that go beyond what is possible with a paper book – the dictionary, the notes file etc. I also like the idea of “Kindle singles” that was recently announced – publishing documents of a length between blog post and paper book – perfect for those cases where an idea that would make a wonderful 20-page essay previously needed to be blown up into a 250-page book just to have something substantial to sell on the shelf of a bookstore.
But we are currently just scratching the surface of what is possible with ebooks. The whole market still feels a lot like digital music before Apple – the needlessly restrictive DRM, publishers’ reluctance to publish their content, innovation killed by the media companies…

The verdict

So should you buy a kindle today?

If you want to get an e-reader anyway: get one – it’s definitely the best device in its class.

If you’ve been holding out, waiting for e-readers to mature: get one, it’s a marked improvement over the previous generations, and the first one that’s worth buying as a non-early adopter

If you want to save money, hate DRM, need a complete catalogs of books to buy, or see no reason to buy another gadget: stick to paper books, and wait for publishers to change. Also, the display technology and usability is pretty good today, but likely to improve further.